Criminal; Insanity Acquittees; Length of Commitment; Whether Trial Court
had the Legal Authority to Impose Consecutive Terms of Commitment upon the
Acquittee. In two criminal files, the acquittee, in 1981, was found guilty
but not criminally responsible by reason of mental disease or defect for the
crimes of assault in the first degree, assault in the second degree and
possession of a dangerous instrument in a correctional institution.
Thereafter, in 1982, the trial court imposed a term of commitment of twenty
years in one of the files and a term of commitment of twenty-five years in the
other file. In light of an ambiguity in the record regarding the length of the
acquittee's total period of confinement, the court, in 2007, clarified that the
terms were intended to run consecutively to each other. In response, the acquittee
filed a motion to correct his term of commitment and an application to be discharged
from custody, arguing that consecutive commitments were not specifically authorized
under the commitment statute that existed when he was originally committed in
1982, namely, General Statutes § 53a-47. The trial court rejected the
acquittee's claim and denied his motions. In doing so, the court determined
that the lack of any reference to consecutive commitments in § 53a-47 was
irrelevant to the issue at hand. The dispositive inquiry, the court opined,
was whether the acquittee was, in the language of the statute, "no longer
mentally ill to the extent that his release would constitute a danger to
himself or others." The court emphasized that under the provisions of §
53a-47, an acquittee may expect a term of commitment that is at least as long
as the maximum criminal sentence for the offenses charged, which, in this case,
was forty-five years of incarceration, and that an even longer period of
commitment may result where the acquittee continues to be dangerous. It is
therefore the dangerousness of an acquittee, the court concluded, that dictates
the length of the commitment, not the term of confinement that a court initially
imposes. The court then found that because the evidence demonstrated that the
acquittee continued to pose a danger to himself and to others as a result of
his mental illness, he was not eligible for release. In this appeal, the
Supreme Court will determine whether the trial court's decision was correct.